[Nel] Congratulations + concerns

Sat, 30 Jun 2001 19:57:00 +0200 (MET DST)

Hullo,
+I've been following the development of NEL for
+some time, I haven't been contributing due to lack
+of spare time, but I wanted to congratulate the
+Nel team for their idea and work.
+
+However, I have one major concern with the licence mecanism.
+Indeed, your idea is that what the people will pay for in
+games based upon Nel is content and not code. Saying this, you 
+implicitly state that content and code are completely distinct things.
+It is true for the most part (graphics, sounds, AI scripts, background,
+plots etc),
+but I can't convince myself that it applies to the rules of the game,
+for I can't help to think that for efficiency matters they should be 
+hardcoded in the different services. (The reason being that because of
+their level of abstraction, using a scripting mechanism would be terribly
+painful and would require a design of the services architecture allowing
+for total flexibility).
+
+I played Ultima Online for 3 years, I read the rantings of lum the mad
+daily, I read the dev boards of currently in development MMORPGs, I'm
+aware of the specificities of the "big three" and all this leads
+me to the conclusion that the rules (i.e. economy system, combat system,
+advancement system etc) are a part of the content at least as important
+as the rest regarding a game's interest (I wouldn't be willing to
+create a MMORPG if I wasn't utterly frustrated by the current trends
+in those games). 
+
+Therefore, while I totaly agree that any improvment
+or further development of Nel's features should be shared, I'd
+like you to reassure me about the protection of one's rule system
+in your design philosophy.
+
+Sorry for this long mail and for reviving this probably old and well
+debated issue :)
+
+	Yann
+
+
+